eBay India is calling for PR agency pitches after Holi

 26th February 2015    PR News 
 Paarul Chand

eBay India has decided to call for pitches for its PR business in India. Currently eBay India’s PR is handled by Perfect Relations.

Market sources told PRmoment India that eBay India will start taking pitches post Holi. The agencies that have been invited to pitch are 20:20 MSL ( 20: 20 MSL handles a part of the work for eBay globally), Edelman India as Edelman is EBay’s global agency( Edelman is yet to confirm its participation), Adfactors PR and Avian Media( for its expertise in eCommerce –Avian has handles Jabong, Big Basket and Yatra) . Perfect Relations has also been invited back to pitch. Weber was not invited as they handle competitor Amazon. Zeno group in India, part of the Daniel J Edelman group of companies was also asked to pitch , but chose to hand over the pitch invite to Edelman.

According to sources, eBay India is looking at a national PR mandate minus social and digital marketing; the whole account is estimated at 40 lakh rupees. The mandate would cover PR duties in ten markets in India including the large metros as well as Tier 2 cities which house many of eBay India’s sellers.

The e-commerce market is one of the hottest sectors in India today seeing multi-million dollar deals and a slew of strong domestic players such as Flipkart and Snapdeal as well as the purchase of a 25 % stake in Paytm by Alibaba’s Jack Ma earlier this year. eBay is currently undergoing a global restructuring which could be one of the reasons for a change as well as the changes in its current agency Perfect Relations

It is against this backdrop that eBay India is calling for pitches. Its’ current agency Perfect Relation has seen a flight of top talent in the last few months to Weber including that of its MD, Valerie Pinto. Who now currently heads Weber Shandwick in India, Shashikant Someshwar - Perfect’s former VP operations, as well as Rohan Kanchan, former Vice President and Head of Strategy, Perfect Relations.

Perfect Relations has also had a failed sale to MSLGROUP last year and seen long- time client Coca Cola India call for fresh pitches last month.

Girish Huria, formerly with Avian Media, took over from Deepa Thomas as eBay’s head of communications in India on September 29^th, 2014